Deakin Speaking

On 8 July 2015, Myanmar’s Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) government announced that Myanmar would go to elections on 8 November. This raised the prospect of whether Myanmar’s process of reform and liberalization – what US President Barak Obama had earlier called the country’s ‘real but incomplete’ process of democratization – would continue. In […]

On Monday, the public hearings for Victoria’s Royal Commission into Family Violence began. The public hearings follow the completion of community consultations and the close of written submissions in late May. Nearly 1000 Victorians – advocates, experts and policy stakeholders – provided submissions to the commission. They called for change in the justice, health, social […]

In the UK, men can no longer claim they were provoked by jealousy into killing their partner. Our research published recently in the Cambridge Law Journal revealed the extent to which that change, enacted in 2010, has altered the way the English courts have responded to murder motivated by sexual infidelity. The answer is not […]

In early May, 2015, news services reported that Denmark, one of those wacky Scandinavian countries that just seems to be obsessed with being progressive, would allow retailers to only offer card payment, and allow them to ban cash as a means of transaction. For quite a while, Scandinavia has been all about a cashless society. In […]

In the 2015 Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE) Annual Alcohol Poll, 34 per cent of Australians said that they drink to get drunk, 43 per cent said they had vomited as a result of drinking, and 75 per cent said Australia has a problem with excess drinking or alcohol abuse. But in the same […]

On 2 May, a girl was born. She was one of around 180,000 or so girls born that day. Her life is special, as is the life of every new child, and one hopes that she – and all other babies – go on to lead happy, fulfilling and productive lives. But that one particular […]

The execution of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran has had a riveting, almost cathartic, effect on many Australians, including its political leaders. The overwhelming response has been one of rejection, sadness and, in some cases, anger. Given that Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said last year that this issue would not be allowed to affect […]

When I stay in a hotel, there is a tacit agreement that I (the guest) will pretend to not know that someone slept in the bed and used the room before me, and in return they (the hotel) will do everything they can to remove any evidence that somebody has been in the room prior […]

Coco Pops has received two stars in the voluntary health star rating system, but don’t expect a huge change in buying patterns, at least in the short-term. Sales may even increase slightly, because it is likely that most people already know that Coco Pops isn’t a health food, and the two stars may well provide […]

The world has many almost forgotten trouble spots, where conflict has not been resolved but appears to have been contained. In Western Sahara and Morocco, that may be about to change, with potentially wider implications. The western-most corner of Algeria, near the border with Morocco, Western Sahara and Mauritania, is a desolate and unforgiving place, […]